OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AFP)
Israel said on Sunday it will release five Lebanese prisoners on Wednesday, including Samir Kuntar jailed for a triple murder, in exchange for two soldiers captured by Hezbollah two years ago.
The Jewish state was also set to transfer to Lebanon the bodies of almost 200 fighters of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah and release a number of Palestinians under the prisoner swap.
"Samir Kuntar and four other Lebanese prisoners -- Khaled Zidan, Maher Kurani, Mohammed Sarur and Hussein Suleiman -- will be taken on Wednesday from their centers of detention to a place to be decided by the Israeli army," Prison Service spokesman Ian Domnitz told AFP.
The prisons authority said the releases would begin on Wednesday, without giving details, in line with the government's decision of June 29 to go ahead with an exchange of prisoners with Hezbollah.
Under the deal, Hezbollah will hand Israel two reserve soldiers it captured in a cross-border raid on July 12, 2006, sparking a devastating 34-day war that killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
Israel believes that the two servicemen, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, are dead.
But Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said earlier this month that "so far Hezbollah has not handed over any information about the fate of the two soldiers. Anything said in Israel is mere speculation." |
 |
Ron Arad As part of the U.N.-mediated deal, Hezbollah has also handed Israel a report it had drafted on the fate of Israeli airman Ron Arad who went missing in Lebanon in 1986, and whose fate remains unknown.
As part of the arrangement, Arad's family has received previously unseen photos and extracts of a diary he kept in captivity, Israel's Channel 10 television said.
One of the pictures, believed to date from 1987, shows Arad in pyjamas. His left arm appears to be wounded. According to the Channel 10 report, Hezbollah also transferred parts of Arad's diary which runs until 1987.
In its report, Hezbollah said Arab had died in captivity, but Israel remained skeptical over the validity of its findings.
"The report ... does not provide a clear answer over the fate of Ron Arad and does not solve the issue. We are committed to continue working to find out his fate," Defence Minister Ehud Barak was quoted saying by his ministry.
Israeli officials had made it clear the deal would go ahead only after Israel received intelligence on the air force navigator missing since a mission over south Lebanon during the country's civil war.
Israel wanted the Shiite group to explain how it reached that conclusion and why it could not locate Arad's remains.
But although the deal still requires the final approval of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government on Tuesday, it is expected to be carried out as planned.
Hezbollah chief Nasrallah said early July that if the deal goes through, "Lebanon will be the first Arab state to close the file of its prisoners. There will be no more Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails." |
